


Listening in the Silence

by HamishHolmes



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, No actual appearance of Jim, Pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 03:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1673168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HamishHolmes/pseuds/HamishHolmes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ship was boarded and has crashed onto an unknown planet. This is Bones POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Listening in the Silence

Bones woke. The first thing that hit him was the agony. His left leg felt smashed and he was sure that his elbow wasn’t supposed to bend that way. But he swallowed his pain and opened his eyes, desperate to see someone to help. But there was no one. All around him were the corpses of crew members, broken, burned and blistered. He could see through a hole in one man’s head, all the way through to the black sky beyond. The blood that was pooling around the man seemed to run in a perfect circle, mockingly beautiful in a macabre way. There was a fiery pain in his gut and a large metal beam across his chest restricting his breathing. He couldn’t see anyone alive, anywhere, and he was absolutely sure that this time, there wasn’t going to be a way out. Jim had a way of making everything seem possible. Every plan that seemed to have less that a one percent chance of success seemed to work around him, even if it did nearly cost them everything. Now, it seemed to have cost too much, for Bones at least. He hoped though, that there was someone, preferably Jim, still out there, living and fighting the good fight for Starfleet. But he didn’t think there could be, not after a crash like that. He shifted slightly, trying to look around some more and white hot pain spasmed through his leg, causing him to scream out in pain. They had been massacred and then the attackers had taken their power and left them to be dragged into this planet by its gravitational pull. He thought back to his time at the academy with Jim, when the biggest danger was that Professor Harrison would murder them for being late for his class with hang overs. He thought back to the first time that Jim had been in charge of the Enterprise. He guessed he should have known then, that it wasn’t going to end well. And a little bit of him did. But none of him regretted his choice to follow Jim to the end of the universe and back. He would do it all again, just the same ... well, except for that Aaamazzarite chick that he dated once on a shore leave. That wasn’t fun. But he would always choose to take Jim aboard the Enterprise that first time, even if he had a million lifetimes to do it differently. His back was in agony, and his leg felt like it was burning. Heck, he thought, it might be burning, because I can’t even see my own damn leg. At that point, something in him snapped. This was not how it was going to end, lying on some bloody foreign planet under a section of his own ship, not being able to see his goddamn legs! He slowly manoeuvred his uninjured arm so that his hand was beneath the beam and with a yell of agony, he pushed and rolled at the same time. Nothing. He tried again and again, until eventually, he ended up on his stomach, on top of the beam. Bolts of pain lanced through his veins as he lay panting on the beam, looking down at the blood soaked earth with a mirthless smile on his face. He rolled over again, grimacing in pain, until he could sit up. There was nothing, nothing but burning as far as he could see. He could see people in all colours lying like broken dolls abandoned after a demonic child was finished playing. Somewhere, the sirens of the Enterprise were still working, sending out a haunting melody, like an old music box that just won’t stop playing. He couldn’t see faces and was scared that if he looked to close then he would recognise friends, people he considered family, who he wasn’t sure he could lose. But he couldn’t move any way. His left leg, now that he could see it, was barely there at all, barely a leg at all. He couldn’t see anything that he could use for a crutch, not unless that engineer’s spine was as stiff as they all used to joke it was. Off to his right, he heard a groan. Looking, he saw a command gold shirt and little else. The face was disfigured with major scarring and the left arm was completely severed. Bones didn’t want to go closer, didn’t want to see who it was, but he felt that he had a duty to, being a medical man and all. If nothing else, he should be able to ease the passing of this man, or woman, or other; it really was hard to tell. He rolled and twisted, teeth gritted and left fist clenched until he made it to his hands and knees – though he thought, with no mirth, maybe each of those nouns should be in the singular. He began to make his way through the piles of wreckage, smashed leg dragging along the floor. The smashed section of his leg didn’t hurt: no nerves he guessed. But the part of his thigh that was still vaguely thigh shaped was in agony with every shuffle-step he took. Eventually, he made it to the side of the moaning man. He looked down, through the dirty atmosphere into the eyes of a terrified Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu. The man’s face was covered in a thick layer of blood, dark and congealed, but Bones couldn’t tell whether it was his or someone else’s. But there was a lot of it either way. 

“Hey, Sulu,” he said, his voice, horse and melancholy, though he was trying to hide it, “right old mess you’ve got yourself into here.”

“You don’t look too good yourself,” hacked Sulu, chest heaving.

“Too bad – I was going to help you, but now that you’ve insulted my delicate ego, maybe not.”

Sulu laughed the sound gurgling and spluttering out of his throat, followed by the blood that pooled on his bottom lip before over flowing and dribbling down his chin. Bones reached round to his back pocket where he always kept his arsenal of hypos. But it was empty. Of course it was. Sulu noticed what Bones was doing and reached his hand up very slightly.

“Don’t worry Dr McCoy,” he spluttered again, blood spewing slightly between his lips again, “I know what’s happening here. I’m no fool.”

“We’ll figure something out, Sulu,” growled Bones, not ready to admit in his head, what his heart had figured out the moment he’d heard Sulu moaning.

“Doc, you haven’t got a med-bay, a team, or even a hypospray to your name right now. You’re in so much pain that you can’t even hold your hands steady, let alone operate on someone. You gotta let me go. You gotta accept that you’re going loose this one.”

He kept hacking and blood blowing small bubbles on his bottom lip, so Bones rolled him onto his side, letting the blood cascade down his cheek from his mouth and onto the blackened ground. It pooled round Bones’ knee and he could feel it soaking up into his trousers, but Bones didn’t move.

“H-hey,” coughed Sulu, reaching his hand up to lie weakly on Bones’ shoulder, “can you do s-somat for me?”

Bones could hear the man’s breaths getting shallower and wetter. He had heard it all before and he could feel his frustration at being helpless rising again.

“Anything.”

“T-tell ... Che – Chekov ... that I ... I love him.”

“Pavel Chekov?”

“Yeah,” huffed Sulu, “he ... he me ... he means everythin’ ... to me.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him,” said Bones, tears welling in his emerald eyes, “I promise I will, if it’s the last bloody thing I do.”

Sulu smiled and coughed again, his whole delicate frame rocking with the force. Then, with a last shuddering, hiccoughing gasp, he fell silent. His hand slipped from Bones’ shoulder to land limply against the bloodstained dirt. His mouth went slack and his eyes went wide, and though they held fear a deep and primal fear, he also saw the peace shining through, that he had seen in all ... in all the ... in all the dead people he’d ever seen. His blood boiled in his veins, fury bubbling in his core, but he steeled himself, burying the fury deep. He wanted to murder every last son of a bitch who had boarded his ship. He wanted to scream and yell and beat the floor in a good old fashioned tantrum. He wanted to let it all out and then lie on the floor and accept the death that he knew was coming soon. But he didn’t. He didn’t because he’d made a promise and goddammit a McCoy kept his promises.

“Chekov,” he yelled, “Chekov! PAVEL BLOODY CHEKOV!”

There was no response and Bones began to curse loudly to the air, damning every God he knew and telling the whole planet exactly how he felt about the bastard who had ripped his family apart.

He knelt there in the blood of a crew member, a comrade, a friend, with barely four limbs, yelling and swearing at the world. He wanted to laugh, or cry, at the injustice of it all. Instead, he forced himself to move, heading towards another body that he’d seen earlier. It wasn’t Chekov; it was one of his nurses. She was already dead, a knife buried hilt deep in her temple.

“YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!” he screamed, tears racing down his face, “YOU MONSTERS.”

What was he supposed to tell her four year old? What was he supposed to tell her young son? That he couldn’t save her? That she wasn’t coming home? The kid wouldn’t understand that. Fuck that, Bones didn’t really understand it.

But he kept moving, pausing only to close her eyes. It took him an age to reach the next body, and when he arrived, he wished he hadn’t managed it.  
Scotty lay there, red shirt torn and blackened. Bones had never loved the annoying Scot; he had always been too harsh and abrasive for his liking. But there was no way he’d have wished this on anyone and Scotty had been everything a dedicated crewmember should be. And he never deserved to die like this. Bones’ face was now covered in hot salty tears.

He remembered when he had signed up for Starfleet after his horrific divorce. He remembered the ages he spent with Jim in the academy, spending long nights talking and watching ancient and shitty earth movies. He remembered when he had joined this bloody crew, sneaking Jim aboard the ship and then watching him rise swiftly to captainship. But he couldn’t remember when he had begun to care so much, so much that every time he saw another one of his crew on the floor, it stabbed him like a dagger through his heart and made him want to punch things violently. He breathed deep, emotional and physical pain rendering him nearly catatonic. But he remembered the promise he’d made to a dying friend. You don’t break a promise like that. So he pushed onwards, searching for the gold shirt that he knew Chekov would be wearing.

There.

Bones headed towards it as fast as he could and he made good progress, though in agony.

It was Chekov. He looked alive, but Bones couldn’t be sure.

“Chekov!?” he said, loudly enough to wake the man if he was only sleeping, “Chekov.”

The young man’s eyes opened in a flash and his hand came up, a knife in it.

“I vill hurt you,” he said, his accent thick and his voice trembling.

“Chekov, it’s me; it’s McCoy.”

“Doctor?”

“Thank fucking God kid,” he smiled slightly, “I got a message for you.”

“Vat?”

“Sulu, he wanted me to tell you something.”

“Hikaru!” shouted Chekov, sitting up, and clutching at his side, “Vere iz he?”

“He wanted me to tell you that he ... that he loves you.”

Chekov fell back.

“Really, you’re not messing vith me?”

“No kid, people don’t make that kind of confession without meaning it.”

“Vat kind of declaration?”

“The kind you don’t get to make a second time.”

Bones couldn’t look at the kid, whose curly hair was matted against his forehead and eyes wide and questioning. He glanced down at the ground. But Chekov read it in his body language.

“Oh,” he said, his voice sounding so broken when only moments before had sounded so full of wonder at Sulu’s words.

Bones looked down at Chekov and something inside him snapped. The floor he could see was suddenly a lot closer. His nose touched the floor and He began to sob harsh sobs. He hadn’t cried in front of anyone, not since he was seven and his father hit him and told him that he should man up. Now, he lay face down on the dark ground of a foreign planet, chest heaving and mouth wide, tears and snot dribbling down his face. Chekov was unsure of what to do, so he merely put his hand on Bones’ shoulder.

“It’s NOT FAIR!” howled Bones, “IT’S NOT FAIR! I CAN’T BELIEVE ... WE DIDN’T DESERVE ... SULU DIDN’T DESERVE THIS! IT WAS NEVER ... it was never supposed to end like this.”

Chekov was crying too, but it was silent, tears coursing along his freckled cheeks to pool on his neck.

“No, you didn’t either,” he said, so softly that Bones almost missed it.

He could feel the blood emptying from his veins through his leg. He could feel himself getting dizzy now that there was no reason for him to push. He only wished that he’d managed to find Jim, but he knew that there was no way now, that he could get back up.

Instead, he let his head loll forward and he mind go blank and all that fills it is one thing. Jim. As Bones lies dying next to Chekov who hadn’t long to live himself, all he could think of was the damn blond captain and how much he hoped that he was alive somewhere.

“I love you Jim.”

**Author's Note:**

> Any comments / kudos-es / prompts welcome.


End file.
